Novell's Linux Business Takes a Seat At the Grown-Up Table

CNet is reporting that while Novell still has a long way to go before they start making Red Hat nervous, they have at least gotten a seat at the grown-up table. Reporting 31% year-over-year growth in their Linux business, Novell attributes very little of this success to their Microsoft partnership, looking to their Redmond connection mainly for interoperability work. "Novell's core Linux business is growing. By 'core,' I mean that our non-Microsoft- related Linux business is growing. These are Suse Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions sold directly by the Novell sales force or by our channel partners, without any Microsoft certificates or Microsoft salespeople involved. However, the important thing is that our total revenue picture for Suse Linux Enterprise is growing, as our customers increasingly don't distinguish. As we've said before, Microsoft offers an alternate avenue for purchasing subscriptions but we are focused on growth of the whole category."

Geez, it took you that long to figure it out?

[Stu101]

We are late arrivals in linux land. However we are deploying a new suse server a week to replace NT servers. We have gone from zero to 35% in little over 3 months. It really is linux for the enterprise made easy. And whats even better, the toolsets are free, opensuse is free, and no shitty activation codes. It's all gravy, to use a bad term ;)

Re:Amazing

[spun]

I was at Novell Brainshare recently with thousands of other people from all over the world. I'd have to say your assessment of Novel's position is way out in left field. You really have no idea what you are talking about, sorry.

Mod Parent Up

[mpapet]

While the parent's tone is strong, there are other factors besides the trojan horse microsoft has delivered to consider. The company is not financially healthy in any way, shape, or form. Management performance is still dismal. SuSe is not a silver bullet, or at least hasn't appeared to save the company.

Argue for a minute that SuSe saves their bacon, there's no proof Novell can out-manage RedHat. Let's say BOTH companies are viable growth assets, then I think Microsoft will open the trojan horse they sent to Novell at bare minimum.

Re:Frosty Posts

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Speaking of security, I kinda like 2 things about Apparmor vs SELinux (which oddly, Canonical chose for Ubuntu, over SELinux). One, the control follows the relative path to the file as opposed to the inode. Now, some may like it the other way around, but if you update the executable, as long as the path stays the same, no changes have to be made. This increases the chance of an administrator NOT forgetting to update the settings for the restrictions during an update or for a patch where they have not gotten all the details. The other reason...It is not written by the NSA. Call me nutty, but I don't exactly like the involvement of government in my software.

I see it this way.

[RotateLeftByte]

Ok, I use Linux and have since Slackware 1.1. I promote Linux as a more than viable alternative to the Redmond 'Lock in System'.

But, I see SUSE as the following.

A Linux system that you can buy (note not OpenSUSE) without the fear of being sued by Microsoft for the duration of the licensing agreement between the two companies.

For that reason, I would not recommend SUSE to any business at all. I might be legally wrong but that is how the tie up between Novell & MS seem to me a non Lawyer.

I do appreciate the stuff that Novell has contributed but personally, I won't touch anything that uses MONO with a 100m Barge Pole. Yes, I know it is apparently free of any potential patent liabilities but I see it as a trojan horse much like Moonlight.

IMHO, Microsoft wished that Novell, RedHat & Canonical would just disappear. They are not so I wish that for once they (MS that is) would say 'Ok guys, we will work properly with you for the pure benefit of our customers'. That is as likely (IMHO) as Concorde ever flying again.

"grown-up table" ?

[bsDaemon]

So, I actually went and R'd the FA, because I was curious about this phrase -- of course, it doesn't appear in the article, so I can only assume that it was the submitter's invention.

That said, what, exactly, constitutes the "grown-up table" and who sits there? Does it mean that they're now a player against Red Hat? Against Sun? "Endorsed" by Microsoft?

What exactly are the rules of the game at this point. 10-15 years ago, BSD and Linux were going head-to-head against commercial UNIX, such as Solaris, HP-UX and the like. Now, Sun is getting back to its roots and open sourcing Solaris (Bill Joy, original BSD author and creator of vi and csh was a founding partner of Sun, after all).

It seems that from old metrics, the "grown ups" are trying to sit at the "kid table."

Does that indicate that we now look at Microsoft as "grown up?" Are we talking merely from a business standpoint, not technological? I surely hope that is the case.

Re:Geez, it took you that long to figure it out?

[MrMr]

Well, why not ask Novell's business partner:

http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts/default.mspx [microsoft.com]

With friends like that...

Times are changing

[blind biker]

Do you remember the days when any company that stroke a deal with Microsoft, died a horrible and agonizing death? Well, look at this deal with Novell: it seems this is the first time a company pulled a fast one - on Microsoft! Novell saw a small opportunity to make a bit of money and offered to Microsoft something Novell must have known is worthless and impossible: the proprietarization of Linux. Microsoft was desperate enough that it wanted to believe this baloney and Novell was more than happy to oblige and feed them the BS, making a few bucks in the process, and attracting (extremely few) additional customers. Not too much profit, but every little helps, and you won't spit on it, especially if you give NOTHING in return, like Novell did to Microsoft.

Microsoft is getting sloppy and silly. These are indeed new times.

Re:Frosty Posts

[spun]

I like Apparmor because it is much much easier to configure and use than SELinux. It also creates less of a performance drain.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[alexborges]

I have the exact opposite experience.

Ive had novell support tell me that some packages IN THEIR DISTRO are supported and some arent.

Which are which (i asked him) and where in your page can I know?

You cant, he said....

In RH, everything in the distro y rightly supported through adn through.

"The grown up table"

[Vexorian]

So, was the rats' table full?

Novell attributes it to the MS-FUD deal, yeah of course, if you receive big large amounts of money from another company so you paid them for every purchase done to you, and you would also use this fact to advertise yourself as more legal and "more interoperable" than other distros, it probably will put you in a high spot. However, that doesn't make you less of a rat.

Smearing other Linux bussiness and using false advertising to climb and steal their market, it makes you a rat in a book.

Oh, sorry slashdot, I forgot "Novell contributes a lot to free software", so it is untouchable and I cannot make a bad commentary about them or what they are doing to exploit a deal that should have never been made. Sorry for criticizing Novell, uh oh.

Re:Is this a good thing?

[oatworm]

Personally, I'm happy to see "embrace and extend" applied against Microsoft. Microsoft overturned industry-established standards by embracing them (adopting them, providing interoperability with them, etc.), then creating Microsoft-only extensions that locked people into their products. Now, Novell is giving Microsoft a little taste of their own medicine, embracing .NET and turning it into Mono, among other things.

The only way we're going to get back to truly open standards for everyone is if we accept the reality that, at the current time, a lot of standards are Microsoft-only, and only by providing a clean interoperability path with existing tech will we ever be able to migrate to something better.